


'06 Bonnie and Clyde

by TrisB



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-15
Updated: 2007-04-15
Packaged: 2017-10-30 14:14:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/332631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrisB/pseuds/TrisB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We're next."</p>
            </blockquote>





	'06 Bonnie and Clyde

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lizzen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizzen/gifts).



> Dark/ridiculous AU that posits a different outcome to "Not Pictured," the season two finale. Warnings for offscreen violence/character death and a relationship built on lieeeees.
> 
> With thanks to Lodessa and Peripeteia.

"I love you," is how she practices saying it to her reflection. I love you. I'm in love with you. The latter sounds desperate, almost; the former is generous and simple, but maybe too much so? Mac says it over and over again until she thinks she might be pronouncing it wrong. Te amo. Ridiculous. "Love you." It's better. She drops the pronoun and declares herself once to the mirror before settling back into bed, quivering and impatient; Cassidy had to run out for more condoms, like a loser (who only brings three and ruins the first two?), but he'll be back.

She will say it then, she promises herself, and when he bounds back into the room, looking triumphant, she's so relieved to see him that she forgets all of her rehearsal and squeals "I love you," into his chest as it looms over her face. Mac repeats what she said without regret as they roll over, her legs straddling his waist. I love you; and she means every letter of it.

***

The headlines are prominent enough to invade even her discriminately chosen Gmail webclips. _"Half a dozen dead in Neptune, CA."_ It's nine a.m. and Cassidy is on the phone with room service. Mac grabs his hand as she clicks on the article.

Neptune Grand, Aaron Echolls, Woody Goodman, Keith Mars, Veronica Mars, Logan Echolls. "Oh my God," croaks Mac. "Oh my God. Oh my God."

"Fuck," Cassidy whispers, still speaking into the receiver.

Eyes widening, Mac turns to stare at him. "What the fuck?" is all she can manage, which is pitiful. Veronica is one of her closest friends. This was graduation, this was three condoms used as intended and sore thighs and french toast on the best morning of her life; this was not subject for a body count. What it is cannot be reconciled with what she thought it was, and so she just kind of holds onto his shoulders and asks him what is going on, what can possibly be going on, until he says something that resembles an answer.

"We're next," is what he says. Mac exhales and notices that she has dug her nails into his back with all the force her fingers have, and he hasn't said a word about it. "I think we're next."

He's a good boyfriend this time around. He gives her answers when she wants them.

***

If they're really next, they shouldn't stay, but it takes Cassidy all morning to convince Mac that they have to go, they life-or-death have to go, because all she can do is reload Google News on her laptop, just press F5 every few seconds to watch the stories pile up. After an hour or two the chaos begins to take shape. The story, as the papers would have it, is a sequel of sorts to the Lilly Kane murder case. _"What if Lilly was Patient Zero in an murderous outbreak whose latest bout Agatha Christie would find grisly and confusing?"_ asks one blogger, spinning what sounds like an unlikely tale of Six Degrees From Lilly — her brother's disappearance, her brother's ex-girlfriend's death, and that of her convicted murderer had all seemed unconnected, sure, but her best friend, her boyfriend, her accused killer, and both sheriffs who handled investigations into her murder? _"If I were Celeste Kane, I wouldn't sleep easy tonight."_ Mac blinks at the words and wonders who on earth _could_.

Still: "I didn't even know Lilly," she tells Cassidy, feeling manic but less than she'd imagined. "If this is true, we should be safe. We're not connected at all."

Cassidy is pacing. "Mac," he says, "do you really think one person did this all? Bludgeon, bus crash, plane explosion, three gunshot executions with two different guns — I don't — who would do all that?"

"Who . . ." She trails off, squinting at the screen. "I don't know. Who would do any of that?"

"What I mean is, there's no style to it. Serial killers have a style, right? Method. This is just a mess." He gestures spastically as if to illustrate his point. "It can't be only one."

"So what do you think," Mac asks, "it's a conspiracy? There's two and a half years between murders here."

"Which only proves my point," he insists. "What happened last night was somebody picking up where somebody else left off."

"So if Aaron killed Lilly and maybe Meg and Duncan, he was targeting the Kanes . . . ."

"And that was his phase one, right," he replies excitedly, "and phase two would have to be Veronica and Logan, the witnesses for the prosecution against him."

"So he shot them on the roof last night, and it was a crime of passion, and that's why it's so messy," Mac says, and Cassidy blinks and shakes his head in a little twitch. She thinks distantly that she shouldn't be saying these things, that she's probably disturbing him, but it's better than 'Oh my God' and she thinks Veronica would understand. "But then the trail ends with whoever killed Aaron right after, and they just probably wanted to make sure they got a clean getaway, and finished off the sheriffs."

"But don't you see?" Cassidy exclaims, almost jumping. "That's what he wants you to think. That he's done what he came to do. The times of death are too close to tell who died first, Aaron or Veronica. But if Aaron died first, and he placed both bombs, then Veronica was just the first in a new string of murders. She's the new patient zero. And it'll take until the next murder for them to realize Aaron didn't kill her."

Mac feels a sob catch in her chest, and it's something like reading that first headline all over again. "Beaver, what if you're right?" She clutches his body to her and presses her closed eyes to his neck. "What if it starts at Veronica?"

Soothing hands stroke her back. "Cassidy," he whispers, and it takes a moment for her to understand that he's correcting her. "It's okay. We just have to get out." He doesn't say who's left to die after Veronica and Logan, but he doesn't have to.

***

During the first few hours of the getaway, reasons it's ridiculous come readily to her. "Cass, we're being paranoid," she says to him as he practically drags her to his car. "None of these murders have anything to do with us." He seems so serious and worried, though, that she almost feels mean calling his theory farfetched, like mean is something that she should be worried about right now — but she knows how fragile he can be. It's never wrong to keep his feelings in mind. Still, she mentally composes all her most articulate, logical points as to why the Lilly Kane theory works best, and when she voices them he shakes his head grimly and keeps on driving.

He takes her to her parents' house and tells her to give a good alibi and get her things. When she protests lying, he mutters something about murderers tracking her in the night, but when she says she might as well just call her parents from the road, he looks at her, shaken and scared. "I want you to be okay," he says, and his voice is the only thing that's kept her sane today, so she listens. He gives her a couple hours with her parents, while he goes to take care of whatever business he has left at home. She ends up not giving an excuse at all, just writes a vague note for them to find later, and leaves with him that afternoon. Their pretext for going is a vigil organization meeting for Veronica and Logan, which of course Cassidy says they should avoid like the plague.

After sleeping one night in his car in a hospital parking lot in La Jolla, Mac feels ready to catch the plague; Wallace Fennel's body is found washed up on Dog Beach two days after graduation, and her reasons and complaints melt away. 

***

Cassidy kisses her like she's the one thing he has left, an idea that's obvious to her because that's how she feels when she holds onto him. Three days later Dick turns up with a bullet in his head, and Mac guesses it's true.

The circles they've been making around Neptune (nervous to cut the umbilical cord, she'd called it) end. "We have to go, I mean go, let's go," he mumbles to the steering wheel, and he seems strengthened a bit by her hand warm on his knee.

***

Mac has come to think of her old life as a dream, or some Nick at Nite broadcast with all the juicy bits cut out, never even scripted. She certainly can't explain any better how she went one day from being a geeky virgin in high school to the next being a fugitive from a ruthless killer, living on the road as long as they can make their luck last. The killer's inactivity since Kendall's death grows more ominous by the day, and Cassidy says it's not enough for them to be presumed dead by the authorities in Neptune; this murderer wants them and will find them. She agrees, naturally; with her days now numbered, it's hard to care about anything but survival. There's no hesitation when she breaks into the most secure databanks there are to steal new identities, new credit card numbers, new lives that they assume and shed, state to state to unsuspecting state. Veronica, in all her mercilessness, might be proud; might be horrified, too, which sort of strikes Mac as even better. 

They fuck in every car they steal, a kind of daring christening — this will be how some intrepid detective discovers that they're still alive, still swapping DNA that'll trace to the names Sinclair and Casablancas, and it should be, because being together is the only thing keeping them that way. Running from death and running from the law, once opposite in Mac's mind, have long since blurred, and she doesn't really mind. The killer got her too, that day, who she was and what she thought she could do; more and more she knows that's no reason to stop.

"Hey," he says, nudging her with a gun (safety on) that's twin to the one she holds. Hold-ups are gauche but this is the big one, will get them behind locked doors at a facility that's worth much more to them than petty cash. "I would die for you. Do you know that?"

Flight from everything that kept him small and frightened has been amazing for Cassidy. She doesn't think he's actually grown, but maybe he has; he stands up straighter, grins devilishly when she least expects it, and he always follows through. The stress of the chase should have destroyed him, and if it did it left a man in its place, who knows what she means no matter how little she says, and these days she never wastes words. "I would kill for you," she replies, smiling. "Hope you know."

"I had a feeling," Cassidy says, and closes in on her lips. His eyelashes still flutter when he touches her, just like they used to, but his kiss is something blazing, new.


End file.
